Poland

This is one of my favorite pictures my mom has brought back from her trips to Poland. She doesn't go there for vacation, or to catch up on her WWII history, she goes to help people - just like this boy - gain some independence from disabilities. The great thing about this picture is the story behind it. They took the time to fit the chair for him, get him use to the char, show him how to use it so that he could get around on his own. After all that was said and done they were saying their goodbyes. He started to get sad, because he was going to have to give the chair back. He didn't understand that was for him to use all the time. When they told him he was going home with it she captured the look on his face as he said, "I get to keep it?!"

My mom, like me, lives a very even life. Few things make her really excited, and few things make her really depressed. We just live on an even line. Poland makes her deviate from the line. I have lived the past few years slowly coming to the realization that I will probably watch as she moves across the world to live there. She disputes it, but it wouldn't surprise me. She has gone every summer for I don't know how many summers. She decided not to go this year and instead stay home and have a surgery. A few days ago the team that went this year came home to report that this summer may have been the last time they are going to go in the summer, maybe go at all. If they go in September, like reported, it will be with a skeleton crew and she can't go in September, that is when she is teaching. The system they work in helps the Polish people to eventually be able to do for themselves what they send her over to do. In the end they worked themselves out of a job over there. Good for the Polish people who now have the skills and equipment to help themselves, bad for those who have a heart for those people.

Going to Poland puts her way over the line, finding out that she may never get to go back to do what she loves to do (making people light up like this boy) puts her way under the line. I'm hoping the reports aren't true, but you never can tell. I keep telling her she can go there and do something else, or work with the Polish people to continue on with the work that they are doing for themselves now . . . my hope is that she does just that.